There seems to be a film on top of the water in my sorority tank. Usually there are bubbles (not ones the girls have blown) floating in the middle & if you look under the water you can see it looks like oil on top of the water.

Today I noticed that ONLY the top of the water is cloudy. I'm so confused. I cleaned the tank completely and rinsed everything really well. I don't know if maybe oil from one of the plants is coming off. Or maybe from the terra cotta pot (I can't remember if the oil was there before I added that or not). If I scoop out the water on top so that you can't see the film anymore, it comes back the next day. There is a filter in the tank and everything!

I was going to say do you have a filter, but you do... That's weird. Hopefully it goes away after a few days.

I have had my tank up for a month or so. It started (I think) 4 days after I put my tank together.
Last night I scooped out some of the water with a cup and on the side of the cup there was this white slimy/oily stuff. I have tried putting in things that kill fungal diseases and parasites in fish thinking that would help, but it hasn't.

I get that when my tank needs a huge cleaning. It's strange, I know. What you do is you do a 60-70% water change and you clean the tank walls really well. It happens in my eclipse tanks every 3 months or so. Usually the big water change and wiping the walls down well takes care of it.

It's like a protein film on the water. I think part of it comes from fish waste, some comes from the food when we put it in the water.

wow thank u dr2b, I have that same kinda yellow-ish film on the top of the water in Jasper's tank.
I had him for months now, but the film just started to form these past couple weeks.
what I changed is I started putting water conditioner in the water, before I just let it sit over night before doing a water change.
I'll scrub the tanks wall's when I do my next water change, see if that will help

with what can I scrub the tank wall's with, it's an acrylic tank, so I don't wanna scratch it more

I use paper towels to clean the tank wall and it works just fine (I have an acrylic tank also). The key is the large water change. You have to put more water in than you take out to get rid of the film. I found that even if there are traces of it on the top when you are finished taking water out, the clean water gets rid of it. Actually, I had to do this on Sunday with Flair's tank. I had just a little bit of the film left... but when I added the water in... it got rid of it. I've also seen people say it comes from water not being agitated enough... but I'm not sure how true this is.

probably, I was wondering if I could buy the bigger bottles of water conditioner, so I asked at my petsmart what was the difference between the small betta bottles and the bigger bottles, and she said that the NutraFin Betta Plus Water conditioner was made for the betta bowls that had no to not enough water agitation (so no to almost no filmy gunk on the water)
and the normal water conditioner was made for tanks with allot of water agitation

hehe thankx for the info dr2b, I'll def. do that on my next water change to see if it helps